Since my last post on dirt ran long I decided to split it into two sections. Previously I talked about grave dirt, this time I’ll talk about goal dirt. I wish it had a better name, but it’s simple and gets the point across.
Goal dirt is dirt from a place related to a specific goal. Need a loan, or money? Get dirt from places like your bank, or your city’s financial district. Healing? Dirt from hospitals and temples. Hexing someone? Get dirt from their property (can also be mixed with dirt from places like dumps, prisons, cemeteries, major highways, and unfortunate places). Want a job, dirt from the building. Your imagination is the limit, as is how you use the dirt when you have it.
Goal dirt is a great way to add a physical anchor to your working, how to link it into a place and concept, to target your working and connect with it. Don’t underestimate the usefulness of linking a spell that is tied to a place into that place through the physical foundation, the earth it rests on.
To collect the dirt you need the same three things mentioned for collect grave dirt: offerings, spoon, and container.
Now offerings can be a bit tricky depending on where you are getting dirt from. While it might be a touch uncommon for someone to light incense or a candle at a grave, or even bring food, no one is going to question it. If I sat down in front of my bank though and lit a cone of incense, I’d get weird looks. On one hand as sorcerous people we should be fine with being weird; on the other hand, we don’t want attention sometimes. In this case things we can make use of smaller food offerings, or water which can be poured out of a bottle, or my favourite stealth offering, cigarettes.
My Jovian offering case.
Now I don’t smoke (though most of the dead people on my altar of the Beloved Dead do), but a cigarette is a great burnt offering. No one pays attention to someone standing by a building with a lit cigarette (you can mime smoking it if you want to look more normal and just blow out instead of inhaling, because the cigarette isn’t for you). Depending on what it is for I might use regular cigarettes, or I might use clove cigarettes (which I understand aren’t really available in Yankeeland) because cloves are a great offering to Jupiter. Also I’ve lit a cone of incense, and sat down beside it holding an unlit cigarette near it, so it looked like the smoke was from my cigarette while I went through my communication with the spirit of the place.
You do pretty much the same thing as you would at a grave. You have the option of either trying to see if there is a spirit of the place you can talk to, as you did with the grave owner, or just work with the energy of the place. I prefer to find a spirit if I can, if not I just work with the flows of energy. Try to find a place, if possible, that is both out of the way, but also connected to the place. So maybe a side path to the building, or out by the sign rather than the door, but still where there is some dirt. Reach out to the spirit, or just gather in the energy. This works well while fake smoking if you take that route.
Again tell the spirit why you want the dirt, what it is for, even if it’s just the energy I find it helpful to clarify the intent out loud. Continuing the stealth sorcery here is where a cellphone comes in handy, cigarette or bottle of water in one hand, cell against your ear, you look completely normal, meanwhile you’re chatting up the spirit/energy of the place. Getting the dirt is a bit trickier. I’m sure you can figure out a way if people are around. One time after tying my shoe I “weeded” a dandelion near my foot growing out of the crack in the sidewalk, looked normal, tossed it in my pocket as I turned around, and then later just took the dirt from the roots. Other times if I just don’t care I reach down with my spoon, just take a scoop and walk off. It all depends on where you’re taking it, your comfort level, and things like that.
If you’re collecting dirt from someone’s place to use against them you might have to collect it quickly, and without asking the spirit of the place. It’s not as powerful, but you do what you can, and a spirit of place might feel protective of the person that lives there. (Usually the energy won’t have the same qualm, which is why meta-modeling is a good thing.)
Use the dirt however you want, mixed with other components, stuffed into poppets and boxes, combined with ink and paint for sigils, whatever.
I was asked on the Book of the Face how I collect dirt, and one on hand it’s really easy, do it however you want, on the other hand, if it’s not something you do I guess it’s helpful to know how others do it, so I thought I’d explain that.
There are (in the system I work with) three basic types of dirt: Grave dirt, Nest dirt, and Goal dirt. (I guess, last one was never named. Also there is Graveyard dirt, which is somewhat like Nest dirt, though elements of the other two now that I’m thinking about it)
The one most occult folks focus on is grave dirt. Whether it is a family member, a famous person, a spirit ally, or random grave, there are lots of uses for the dirt, which I won’t get into here, let’s stick with method. (Also, I reached my word limit talking about Grave dirt, I guess that’s the only one we’ll look at now, but hey, at least Goal dirt is already written, so you’re guaranteed a post on that)
My kit: Incense, lighter, spoon, containers with labels, and cigarettes
To collect grave dirt you need three simple things: offerings, a container, and a spoon. Being how I am I actually have a ritual spoon for this…and by that I mean one that I’ve only ever used for dirt collection and I keep in my backpack at all times. In fact, all three things in my bag at all time. (They didn’t used to be, but some spirits I’m dealing with have me doing a lot with dirt right now…)
The offering is a bit subjective. If you know the person it could be something appropriate to them. When collecting dirt from my Grandma’s grave I took her vodka and a cigarette, cause that’s what she liked. For my other Grandma I’d take flowers, specifically chicory, dandelions, or anything else that grows on the side of the road. For a soldier you could take toy weapons, poppies, whatever. A lot of people offer coins, and mention the Greek tradition of leaving coins for the ferryman. Personally, I think that is fairly silly. Sure, it worked in Greek culture, and pagans who still follow it would appreciate it, but my Grandma would look at me like I was a goof if I thought two quarters would be a good offering. (But being my Grandma she’d take it and thank me I’m sure) I get the reason, I just think it’s too esoteric for most people. If you don’t know the person, or don’t know what they’d like the big five offerings you can give become water, food, incense, candles, and energy.
Approach the grave, centre and still yourself for a moment, just let the world drop behind you a bit, and then set out the offering on or beside the grave. Depending on your skill/inclinations you can either just talk out loud to the spirit, or actually do a bit more work to call them up. On a simplified level I usually put my left hand on the ground and project a tendril into the earth until I find the urn or casket or a sense of presence, then feeding a bit of energy down that line I draw them up, gently asking that the join me, or at least communicate with me. (The latter is because some really like to be rooted in their remains and would rather talk from below than on the surface, I don’t know why, I didn’t expect it until I encountered it)
Give them the offering. If you know how you can either multiple it, or shape it. The advantages to water, incense, and to a lesser extent candles is they’re fairly good at taking the “imprint” of offering visualizations. So if you create a visualization of an offering water/incense/candles are a good way to ground that offering in our reality and keep it stable. Energy is of course even more malleable, you can offer it however you want, I use a variation of a Shinto method. I clap three times, loudly, but not too hard, but enough to make a clear sound. With the first clap I see the sound clearing away discordant energies, the second more fully calls the spirit into the place, the last is a welcome announcement ‘ah you’re here.’ Then I rub my palms together and hold out my hand as if I was holding a ball in my hands. Aside from the meanings of the clapping, by clapping and rubbing your hands you bring blood, and thus energy, to the surface of your hands, which you can then naturally let pool in the bowl of your hands, or you can will it out.
Now that they have been called, and given the offering you can actually talk with them more directly. This is totally up to you; do you just think it, or speak it, do you chit chat or get straight to business? While thinking works, I find the vocalization carries more energy to them, so the messages are more clear, and oddly so are their responses, and at least in a cemetery talking to a grave isn’t unusual. Explain to them that you’re going to take a portion of their land/grave (my grandmother calls her grave her “property”), and if you have a specific request/intent you can explain that, or you can just explain it’s for connecting with them. Wait to see if they agree, depending on your level of communication they might say it, or you might get a sense of yes/no, if you can’t even get that ask for a small sign “If it’s yes touch my right hand, if it is not touch my left.” If it’s a yes, just take a spoon of the dirt, and you’re good. Usually I touch the dirt first and say something like “This is the spot I’m taking if you would bless it for me” to just draw their resonance into it a little more. If it’s a no, either give up, and thank them, or see if you can convince them, maybe they want another offering, maybe they want you to visit more often (yes Grandma…) or something, sometimes it’s a firm no, other times there might be some negotiation.
Put it in your contain, seal it, and label it. (Okay, I label them, because I don’t use all the dirt at once in many cases and don’t want them getting mixed up, and I occasionally grab samples from more than one place in a day, and again don’t want to confuse them.)
There is one toy/technique I love, that I don’t use nearly enough: The Ganzfeld procedure. For those unfamiliar with it I’ll explain it briefly, and if you’re curious I’d recommend a bit of time with google for more detailed instructions.
To do the procedure you need a light defusing mask. The classic “mask” here is a ping pong ball cut in half placed against the eyes. The shape of the half-sphere, and the white plastic cause the light to scatter as it passes through, meaning everywhere you look against the inside of the ball is just vague undifferentiated whiteness. I personally use a thick paper mask, like the paper you’d get in sketch book, part way to being cardstock. The mask is cut out like a sleeping mask, and around the edges is glued stretched out cotton balls, so the mask sits about a centimeter above the skin. This framing with cotton balls also allows the mask to completely touch the skin so no light gets in except through the paper, then just staple elastics to the side so you can wear it. The paper will defuse the light in a similar way. Then you need some headphones, and a device that plays white noise, and any Smartphone can grab an app for that.
You too could look this good
Sit down somewhere comfy, or lay down (though that makes it easier to fall asleep), start the white noise, put on the mask, stop moving and fidgeting, and just let go. Your eyes will struggle to find something to focus on, let them try initially, there shouldn’t’ be anything other than whiteness with no distinguishing features, after minute or so blink your eyes, focus on one spot, and relax. Eventually your eyes will unfocus as they get tired, and then you’re on your way.
What this does is put you in a state of sensory deprivation, not as good as a full chamber for it will do, but it gets the job done. What happens is without any clearly defined sound (thanks to the white noise), or anything clearly defined in your vision (thanks to the mask and your eyes getting tired), your mind kinda…panics? It knows it should be hearing something, it should be seeing something, but it isn’t, so it starts to fill in the gap and then you start hallucinating.
I hear you say “Now Kalagni, this is a mechanically produced hallucination; surely this isn’t useful for magick?”
To which I reply “Who are you, and how did you get into my head?! Also, of course it is useful, if used mindfully.”
Think of it like anything people use, on purpose or accidently for altered states and visions. Sleep deprivation, drugs, exhaustion, even dreams. All of these can cause visions that are completely “mundane” or mental, just images and concepts dragged out of your brain, nothing magickal or objective. True, perhaps, but they can all be focused. If you can keep your mind aware and in control, you can use any of these things to access a magickal experience.
If you go into the Ganzfeld with a specific goal, and keep your awareness focused on a specific end, it can be of great use. So what can you use it for? Well, anything visual/visionary to start. If I need to Look at a client and see what’s going on in their Spheres, I’ll probably sit down with the setup and when I feel reality fall apart, rather than letting my brain ramble and run the show, I direct my Vision toward that person and see what is going on. I use it to scry when I’m having difficulty, usually I’m fairly good, but if I can’t reach a person or place, sometimes this helps get over the hurdle. I know some people have used it to access past lives, that’s not how I work, but it’s another option. You can use it to communicate with spirits in a more intense way. In general it helps you clear out the distractions of sight and sound, so your spiritual senses can be more focused.
It works a bit differently for different people, but for me just before I start hallucinating a black-blue circle appears in the centre of my vision and slowly expands into the whiteness. When this happens this hole in my vision is my Gateway, I project my purpose onto/into it, make it link to the person or place, I might speak a small evocation “Before me opens the Void to Sheta, by Eerah is it opened, by Saytaraan it welcomes me,” whatever, and then I project my mind into the black-blue, and I’m off to wherever.
The thing to be wary of is having this become a technique you can’t operate without. If you can’t scry or communicate with spirits without this you’re going to have a problem. If you can’t scry or talk with spirits, this could help get you started, but you should pay attention to how it happens, what you feel, what the process is, and then work to recreate it without the setup.
The thing that I love about this technique though, is it is relatively simple (the hardest part is making the mask), it’s fairly quick to use (I think it takes about 5 minutes to start hallucinating for me), but it’s also really intense if done right. So really if you’re looking for something to experiment with, you could probably make this setup with stuff you have around the house, in less than 20 minutes, and be scrying in another 5.
If you missed the first and second part of this discussion/rant you can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
I have looked over what I’ve written several times, and sadly I can’t find anywhere to divide this post, regardless of trying to make it two, three, or four sections, the ideas are just all too connected on the final point. So my apologies for a long post, the TLDR version is “If everyone who did it one way gets one set of results, and everyone who didn’t doesn’t have the same results, then maybe they’re not achieving the same thing.”
So having discussed some of the reasons on why I think we should entertain the possibility that HGA may be a system specific term and some of the reasons why it might matter I want to cover one more reason why it might matter, but it’s less supported hence separating from the others. Not necessarily what I believe, I’m agnostic on this point, but just giving another piece of the puzzle perhaps.
People ask “Why does it matter?” and specifically frame it in the terms of “Well they’re not hurting anyone, and if they’re wrong then they’ll find out eventually.” Here I jokingly hear in my head Helen Lovejoy screaming “Won’t someone please think of the Abyss?”
Now this idea comes not from the Abramelin text, and I don’t know if it really came up in the later writings on the HGA (that I don’t remember currently) but it did come up in some of my earlier magickal training, and while I haven’t had any revelation from my Angel to say if it is right or wrong, it is something I’ve pondered on. If we were to frame the HGA and K&C in Qabalistic terms we can say perhaps that the HGA resides in Tiphareth, or at least our connection to them does, more likely they’re something of Kether (I also use a Jacob’s Ladder Tree, so this sometimes conflicts with other systems), and to achieve K&C we have to travel the Third Path to Kether, but what’s along that Third Path? Everyone’s favourite dumping ground the Abyss of Da’ath. If you go from Tiphareth to Kether you must pass over(around/under/through/whatever) the Abyss.
No, not this Spirit of the Abyss.
Now in the system I came from I was taught two things in this regard, first off people that fail to get Knowledge and Conversation with their Holy Guardian Angel end up communicating with a spirit of the Abyss, who claims they are the HGA, acts as them, and lives with the person, while they never see they’re being subtly misled. The second thing is that apparently people who get trapped in the Abyss are stuck there for this incarnation. The second part I have more trouble believing, but I can’t say for sure. If these are both the case, then to me that’s another reason why the way people discuss K&C and the HGA should be reconsidered, but as said, I don’t know what I think about them, and my Angel didn’t give me anything about that idea one way or the other.
Moving on I’d also like to touch on a good point from Polyphanes (he is full of them); it’s hard in many ways to generalize about Knowledge and Conversation. Yet on the other hand I feel the phrase/understanding of Knowledge and Conversation is becoming so generalized as to be useless (oddly makes me think of copyright saturation). I’m not generalizing here based on my experience, I’m drawing on it most definitely, but I’m also drawing on conversations with other people who have done the Abramelin, or written works by such people. So while I can’t generalize, there are patterns that have shown up in the lives of these people and myself, but I see nothing similar from the majority of people claiming Knowledge and Conversation through non-Abramelin means. The revelations will always be different, mine was heavily focused on the marvels of the physical universe. The encounters will always be different, I don’t know anyone else whose HGA decided to play “Moses on the Mount” with them and gave them vitiligo to prove their existence after badgering. (You know what would be better proof? Giving me my pigment back.) But when patterns show up for everyone who did it one way, and they don’t show up when being done another way it makes me question if we’re really talking about the same thing. To go back to the analogy from my earlier post about taking a trip to the beach, if everyone who follows the directions gets to the beach and describes a beautiful sunset, and a person who took a different set of directions say the sunset was nice but the trees were in the way, and no one else mentions the trees, then why would they assume they reached the same point on the beach?
The Abramelin ritual is not just about establishing contact with a specific spirit, it’s about Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel. (Yes, I know the phrase Knowledge and Conversation was termed by Crowley, but Abraham didn’t give a term for the entire operation. I’ll end up using some of Crowley’s language for a lot of this because he did create a good lexicon for discussing the entirety of it. Even though he himself failed to do the ritual.) What’s the difference? Contact with your Holy Guardian Angel is easy. I was in contact with mine in the first trimester of the ritual, and Abraham says in the text itself that you may even have contact with the HGA before starting the ritual as it “will secretly stand by your side and place suggestions in your heart on how you should organize your life and how to follow everything that is written in this book.”
So what is Knowledge and Conversation then? That’s the result of the entire ritual, it’s not just about chatting, it’s about transformation, and not superficial transformation, not life hiccough transformations, it’s about shaking the very foundation of your identity, core, and understanding. “The Guardian Angel will remind you what he has done for you and how you have insulted him in the past. He will tell you how you please him in the future. He will also explain to you about what is the true wisdom, where it comes from, if-and how- you fail in your work, what you lack, how you should behave to control the unredeemed spirits, and how to achieve all you desire.”
“How you have insulted him in the past.” This is a great example of how Knowledge and Conversation differs from simply contact. I have never or heard anyone who achieved Knowledge and Conversation through Samekh (for instance, but insert any non-Abramelin form of supposed K&C here) talk about this. Sure, they may discuss confessions and humbling themselves, but there is a difference between confession and being told every time you have insulted your HGA. While I don’t want to personalize this with my experiences, I feel it’s the only way to make some points. During my Abramelin experience I ended up reliving times I lied before I even started school and having to apologize for those. Confessions and visionary experiences guided for months with hours poured into them a day, and you’re going to experience pretty much every time you failed. I had done confessions and humbling with Mother for years daily before the Abramelin, but they were nothing like what the Angel led me through over that period. This is something I don’t see mentioned by any other method, and I can’t see how you could have the depth of this upheaval and confession in something that takes less time (either per day or in terms of months and years). This isn’t about contact, this is about coming to terms with your nature, your failures, and past. This is showing you the ground from which you grew and where the transformation will be born from.
To turn more Thelemic in language looking at the last part of the quote, Knowledge and Conversation is about having your True Will revealed for you. Now obviously True Will is a really complicated concept, to say it’s what you are to do in the world is an oversimplification. True Will is about being in your perfect place, your Orbit within the Cosmos. This isn’t just about what you do, in terms of a job, this is about everything: your outlook on life, your view of the world, your understanding of cosmology, your ethics and your relationship with external morality, your connection and interaction with other people, your habits, your True Will is everything in your life and all parts of you.
When many people say they’ve achieved Knowledge and Conversation, it’s amazing how little has changed, in fact this observation is what inspired this rant, not a desire for dogmatic adherence to a strange German text. Again being a bit Thelemic about this, I was listening to an episode of Thelema Coast to Coast, when Keith418 was discussing magick as escapism and people being unwilling to do the hard work of transforming the self, and he said something to the effect of “If your HGA isn’t transgressive to your life you probably don’t know them.” This was a moment that if I were in a workshop with Keith418, I might have clapped. Sure most people talk about disruptions that happen as they work towards meeting their HGA, but these are superficial issues that come and go quicker than a Mercury Retrograde. External disruptions are nothing, they often occur with any major Solar working, and any initiation. In fact, while not as widely observed, I’d argue that the Abramelin working tends to cause more internal disruptions than external.
If your HGA isn’t disrupting you to the core, I think it might be questionable, at best. My experience, and essentially every record of the Abramelin I’ve read, talks about this. So when someone says they performed Samekh twice a day for two months, got the same result, and lost a job at the same time, I can’t help but think “Uh…no.” Heck, I magicked myself out of my job by summoning the Angel of Earth. That’s not a major disruption. (In fact, that tends to be a cliche in magick) Remember the HGA brings true wisdom, how you fail, and how to act. These aren’t simple things, remember that list? Your outlook on life, your view of the world, your understanding of cosmology, your ethics and your relationship with external morality, your connection and interaction with other people, your habits, it’s everything. For this ritual not to shake you to the core, to not destroy you and remake it requires one or two things. First, that our modern culture has all of this right, and second, that whatever isn’t right you’ve already worked out for yourself.
I would explain the Abramelin ritual as a massive undertaking in Social De-conditioning. Your outlook on life, as much as you want to think you decided on it with free will, you didn’t, you were given it piece by piece through every TV show you’ve ever watched, every book you’ve read, every song you listened to, everything your parents told you. You took all this, and you incorporated it, you rejected it, you negotiated with it, you synthesized it, you made it into something new and you weren’t aware of it, it’s all unconscious. Think of all the times you say or do something and suddenly realize “Oh my gods, I’m my mother/father” but really most of our thoughts and personalities are shaped by our social conditioning and what we slowly accept and reject over our lives. Now I will not claim I have overcome this, not by a long shot, but my Angel showed me how much of this is there, and has been giving me tools to work on this. Years after the ritual was complete and my Angel is still making me do things to change this world view.
Now I would also like to point out that if you’re thinking “Oh, that makes sense, but I have already dealt with that, noticed it, and my world view is my own” I would like to point out the third-person effect which states that people always think that these things apply to other people but not them, and generally (but here, not always) the people who are more sure that it doesn’t apply to them are actually more likely to be victims of it. So maybe you, or these people actually have actually dealt with this stuff, but never underestimate the human mind’s ability to deceive itself, and this is something I keep right in the front of my mind whenever I think about this stuff. (Actually that’s a good thing to always keep in mind with magick in general)
Okay, maybe this got close.
This goes for everything. Your ethics, they’re made up of everything you’ve seen, done, experienced, and if you think the Angel is going to reveal that you won the jackpot and just by chance those 80s/90s (or whenever) cartoons actually instilled the perfect balance of compassion and wisdom and strength into your personality, again, I’m going to doubt it. Your magickal world view, your mundane worldview, your personality is constructed (or shaped) by all of these things. This is what the ritual begins to break down, especially in the last trimester. This is the metamorphosis of the ritual, this is the point, not having a voice/presence stuck with you for the rest of your life, or until it fades away.
These are the types of things I’ve never seen addressed by people who have “achieved Knowledge and Conversation” by another means. Their disruptions are losing jobs, lovers, moving, periods of bad luck, illness, etc., and while all of these can be part of the Abramelin experience, they’re the window dressing to what is going on inside the ritualist. In fact, now that I typed it, everyone I know who lost a job or lover, or had to move, it wasn’t due to external factors, but internal ones. They realized they couldn’t work in that field anymore, they realized they didn’t love their partner, they realized they were attached to the wrong place and had to move, all of these disruptions were due to the internal upheavals. There are major internal upheavals as you go through it, I joked in a surreal way that the soundtrack of the Abramelin should be “Everything you know is wrong” by Weird Al. (Everything you know is wrong / Black is white, up is down and short is long / And everything you thought was just so important doesn’t matter) In my case my HGA challenged everything from my view on alcohol (I think I’m the only person who was told by their Angel to start drinking), to money and the poor, to how reincarnation operates, to how I treat my literal neighbours, to the very words I would use to define myself, those little labels we all think of as “Me.” Years later and I’m still unpacking all of this, years later and I’m still given whispers on things to do to break all these socially conditioned ideas and habits and attitudes so that my “true wisdom” as Abraham calls it, and how I am to succeed shine through. To use a phrase Polyphanes brought up in our discussion, these changes might be sunrise slow at times, but their triggers that break that self are as bright as stepping from Plato’s Cave. To use an unfortunate parallel it’s like being in a car accident while drinking, that incident shows you that you have a problem, but it will take you months, if not years, to come to terms with your alcohol issues.
Now granted, some people might be closer when they start to being in their Orbit, following their True Will, achieving Knowledge and Conversation, so maybe they won’t need as much work, or have to experience the same type of disruptions. Well, as above that’s exceedingly unlikely. Now if I were to completely interject my personal understanding on what Knowledge and Conversation is and does to you, if you came into this life in such a way that Knowledge and Conversation was not a challenge to achieve, and it didn’t or barely disrupted your life or your self, then you came into this life in your Orbit in the way that I would suspect only Bodhisattva/Enlightened figures do, and that just adds again to the unlikeliness to me. (Note: I do not conflate Enlightenment with Knowledge and Conversation, Enlightenment is something far beyond it. What I mean is that for a person to be able to reach their Orbit so easily that K&C isn’t disruptive is something on the level of mythic in my framing, though I admit that might be bias.)
So to bring this all back. I want to reiterate, when I say the Holy Guardian Angel and other potentially similar spirits are different, it’s not a value judgment it’s just a statement. Zomp isn’t better than seafoam (okay, the name is better) it’s just different. I also don’t think that people who have contacted their tutelary spirit aren’t undergoing interesting and great spiritual and personal revelations, I know I went through great things and upheavals when Mother came to me. Though (and here is where the egotism comes into it a bit) I don’t think most of these experiences compare to Knowledge and Conversation based upon the comparisons of these experience. It doesn’t mean they’re not great, but they’re definitely not the same and shouldn’t be labelled as such.
If you missed what is the lead up to this post, catch it here.
A friend complained that my last post didn’t live up to my warning of it being controversial or egotistical, I hope this post or the next one will live up to that a bit more. As is, what I thought was going to be a two part post, is going to be at least three parts. I’d put it all up at once, but I know almost no one would make it through such a post, without the hit of cocaine required for some exceptionally verbose bloggers.
So I already made a basic case for my issue around people saying they established contact with their HGA, but before I continue I’d like to clarify some points as they came up with discussion with Rachel Izabella.
She raises the very good point that she isn’t sure if it is possible to really distinguish between the Holy Guardian Angel, and potentially similar figures like the Supernatural Assistant. I agree; if it is possible, it’s very tricky, these figures/terms aren’t clearly defined, and honestly when you get “up there” in the magickal realms things start to vague up a bit, but just because they’re hard to tell apart doesn’t mean we should label them the same thing.
Zomp. Now you know.
It’s very hard to distinguish between seafoam green, aquamarine, sea green, and zomp (yes that’s a colour name) and their related colours, but that doesn’t mean we should consider them the same. If we can’t look at these colours and immediately tell them apart, the best way to know which is which is to mix it, and that way we can explain the differences. I can tell you how many drops of what colours to make any of these colours or on a computer I could give you the Hex code for it, and that is how we can tell the difference, when it might not be possible or easy with the naked eye. If it is made this way it’s seafoam, if it is made this way it’s zomp. So while I can’t say how these magickal tutelary assistant spirits are different, and I doubt anyone can that easily, it goes back to the idea that we can only tell them apart if we know how they’re made, the ritual process involved in establishing contact. This isn’t to say one is better than the other, I’m not implying that in the slightest, it’s not my Angel is Bigger/Has More Wings/More Eyes/Is More Fiery than your Angel, it’s just that I think they might not be worth conflating, especially when the experiences are so different…but maybe that’s more about contact than whom you reach?
Now contact is the basis of my secondary argument with people saying they’ve achieved Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel, and while I somewhat had this idea boiling in the back of my head, I have to thank Polyphanes for his conversation on this which helped clarify the issue.
Even though it’s cutting to the end of the argument he brought up the good question of “What does it matter if people misuse the terms?” Why care if their Knowledge and Conversation experience isn’t like mine or that their “HGA” is a different class of spirit from mine? Well a couple of reasons. First, but not the most important, is it is insulting to go through something that takes up so much of my life, and have someone say “Oh, I did 15 minutes of ritual a night for a few weeks and got the same result.” I should note this isn’t just about magick stuff though, think about your careers and have someone saying they could do it just as well cause they read a book on it, or could figure it out themselves. And granted in both cases some amazing people might actually be able to just step up and do it, but they are far far far in the minority that to give them a percentage would be overestimating them. Think about any achievement or training you’ve taken, and the inevitable “I could do that” or “I did that” statements come up. “Wow, you spent 12 years getting your black belt? I just taught myself watching Bruce Lee movies, I’m just as good as you.” It’s an insult, but it also shows how absurd some of the claims are in comparison.
The second reason is that it weakens the traditions. Now, this is always been a problem, people could make the same claim to spiritual/magickal realization and there isn’t anything you can necessarily do about it. In the past though these people were more the town charlatan (this implies a level of conscious deceit that I don’t think is there for most people claiming K&C) so their claims didn’t spread. Sure, the inept witch made witchcraft look silly for the village, but that was it. But now on the internet when anyone can blog or post on forums people who used to be the sole misguided person can now spread their misinformation to dozens and hundreds of people, and if they come off as reasonable/intelligent (and many can and do), people can buy into the idea that they can achieve with little effort too, and it becomes a cycle. Eventually Knowledge and Conversation becomes something that can be achieved in a weekend, and yes, I’ve actually seen descriptions for doing just that. So I think it’s important to clarify the potential differences between the spirits we contact and the mode and result of the communication.
Pretty much like this
I parallel it to the way Reiki has “degraded” in the West. Traditional Japanese Reiki requires work, study, and practice, it took me six years to be ready to start my “third degree” (technically not called that, but whatever). Now on the other hand you can go from Zero to Reiki Master again in a weekend, because what Reiki was and meant in the West has shifted; people deemphasized the bulk of the system and practice. It became about energy healing, not about personal growth and attaining Satori.
Related to that, there is just respect for the tradition. We don’t conflate other spiritual ritual experiences as being the same thing. Initiations into a Greek Mystery Tradition are different than initiations into a Tantric Buddhist practice, and we keep them that way. If people want to argue and make a case for how their initiations are doing the same thing, and getting to the same result, I would support that discussion, but I wouldn’t be a fan of someone outright declaring they are the same. That is part of the problem, people don’t seem to discuss it in terms of “My experience might be similar or comparable to Knowledge and Conversation” they say that they have Achieved it. Granted I have seen a few people who take that sceptical link, and I appreciate that, but pretty much all of them seem to fall short of the ritual results of people who performed the Abramelin, which again leads back to the question of why consider them the same? Reiki lost that respect for the tradition. What was a beautiful and elegant system of meditation with some energy work involved, was diluted and repackage to be a newage rainbow chakra plug-and-play energy healing system. Why? Well, there is a lot of stuff about Takata and what she did to Reiki, but you could say that what Reiki is or was, wasn’t held to any standards, and eventually anything with a basic similarity (Mikao Usui, Japanese, Energy Work) was allowed to be labelled Reiki and no one questioned why dissimilar elements and ideologies were working their way in.
I see Knowledge and Conversation going the same way as Western Reiki, people are deemphasizing the bulk of the system and focusing on what is arguably a minor part of the working, contacting the Angel.
Depending on how people take this, this post may be the beginning of my most controversial and egotistical post set, but I’ll start with the simplest, which is really a transition into the issues regarding the next post on this.
So last week I was at a Halloween party (because that’s what you do in June when you have awesome friends) and I was complaining to a friend that “My Angel woke me up at 0430 yesterday.”
“Now when you say angel you mean…?”
“My Holy Guardian Angel.”
“Now when you say Holy Guardian Angel you mean…?”
“Knowledge and Conversation.”
“Achieved…?”
“Via the Abramelin working.”
“Why didn’t you try an easier or quicker route?”
“Cause then I couldn’t be sure I got the right result.”
A trend in magickal/religious practices for ever, but I’d say more so now with more communication and ideological liberalism, is syncretizing concepts. It’s how we bring peace to different systems and get them to work together, it’s how we justify borrow the nifty things from other traditions. Sometimes the syncretisation is really superficial and useless, other times it is profound. Then oddly sometimes we don’t syncretize things because we get hung up on language (usually of our own tradition), so despite the fact that most definitions of god would apply to Bodhisattvas or Orishas, a lot of people fight the idea of considering them gods. Sure there are some nuanced differences, but for the role they play and the like I’d argue that in general parlance they could share the categorization of “god” but understand that in more cultural specific practices they might not be interchangeable.
So sometimes we combine things under the same label, or the same category/process when they shouldn’t be, and sometimes we don’t when we should. Either way it can murky the water.
In the last week I’ve seen this happen in regards to Fae, Elves, and Tuatha, and I’ve seen it regarding Spirit Guides, Fetches, and Totems. What I want to focus on though is the Holy Guardian Angel. In Western occultism that generally refers to the spirit you come into contact with through the Abramelin ritual. Yet more and more I see people using it refer to other spirits that they have contacted in other ways. Sometimes spirits from other traditions are labeled as the HGA cause they seem similar: The eudaemon from the Greeks, or the Supernatural Assistant from the Greek Magickal Papyri, your guardian angel (as opposed to Holy Guardian Angel), the Fravashi, the Yidam, Godself, your Orisha, the higher self, and so on.
Are all of these the same things? I don’t think so, but I also can’t say for sure. Some of them seem pretty close, others are so distinct I wonder why people are making the connection. What I can say for sure is the only way to know that the spirit is the Holy Guardian Angel as described in the Abramelin and derivative texts, and not something similar, is to perform the Abramelin. It seems like a quibbling point, but it is true. This isn’t to say filing these things under HGA is wrong, but it could be, and is something I think people have to be more open to.
I don’t talk about it much, but that’s the reason I did the full Abramelin ritual; it is the only way I could be sure that the spirit I came into contact with is my HGA and not something similar. It’s a trite analogy, but think about getting directions to a beautiful spot on the beach to watch the sunset. If you follow those instructions you’ll find the spot, and see beautiful sunsets. If you look at the instructions and figure out your own route (or worse, just listen to the description of the destination and try to find it that way) then you might end up in the same place, but you could also end up a kilometre, or tens or hundreds of kilometres away, and while you might get a nice view, or even a beautiful view, it’s not the one you were going for.
So when people ask why I went the path of praying five hours daily, retreating from the world, confessions, sackcloth, ash, rituals, and all that instead of performing Crowley’s Samekh, or doing the Bornless One, or creating my own ritual to achieve Knowledge and Conversation, that is why. Anything else, I wouldn’t be able to say for sure got me the result I was looking for. Similar, or comparable, yes, but not necessarily the same.
Maybe my HGA is the same Supernatural Assistant I’d get from following the PMG route, or performing Samekh, but maybe not. This also doesn’t mean that everyone who performs the Abramelin achieves Knowledge and Conversation, and that’s not to mean it can’t happen other ways. I know people on both ends of that spectrum, but they tend to be exceptions, not rules.
My issue is not just about the spirit that is contacted, but the process of purification and unification that comes with it. It’s not just that the HGA as explained and contacted through the Abramelin might be a very specific spirit different from what is contacted via other routes, but the type of contact and what that means can also be very different, that communication/contact might be different than Knowledge and Conversation, but that, as they say, is a story-rant for another time.
I always want to title my misa posts with something punny, but most ways of using misa sound JarJar Binks/Racist.
For those new, or have forgotten, a misa is an event in espiritismo where a group get to together to talk with their spirits: spirit guides, ancestors, whatnot. Usually there are two people who do most the talking (I’m one of them at my friend’s misas), but everyone can be open to whatever is to be communicated.
I recently attended another misa of a friend of mine, she likes talking to her dead people. I find the entire thing fascinating, the types of messages that come through, how people receive them, who shows up, and how the experience as a whole goes down.
At this misa, like all the others, I know my friend who is hosting it, and then there are generally four or so other people that I don’t know. I find this is an advantage for me because it means my reading isn’t biased by knowing anything about the lives of 4 out of 5 people, which prevents contamination.
I found this a bigger issue this time. It isn’t to say I think my friend was using the excuse of spirits to say what she wanted to say, or that her foreknowledge overwhelmed her perceptions, but the messages that came from her obviously drew from her prior knowledge. For instance she’d bring in a message for someone, and then when it was done she’d occasionally toss out an interpretation “I know you recently changed jobs, maybe it’s about…” or “I’m pretty sure they’re talking about …”
I, on the other hand, had no such advantage (or handicap) being the only person not in that circle of friends. As someone developing my skills, testing my abilities, and looking for verification that’s how I want it to go down. For instance, while it was very unfortunate for the recepient of my messages, in one case I twice upset/triggered the same person because the messages that came through hit on something personal and visceral. I was given descriptions of places where very bad things occured in his life, and related information, but I had no context or foreknowledge for the data. While I can’t rule out woogity variables, it was at least clear I was connected to something, doing something right. Yet my friend doesn’t have that advantage, and perhaps doesn’t want it, maybe I’m too focused on results and proof rather than faith.
I can’t help but wonder how much knowledge taints my friend’s messages, especially when her message for me is somewhat in line with her pre-existing biases and knowledge. For instance at this misa I was told by one of her spirits (cause my spirits never show up to talk to others), that Buddhism seems to be the right path for me and that my ceremonial magick practices aren’t benefiting me, and doing both is just confusing things spiritually. Now said friend has a complex relationship with ceremonial magick, ex-Thelemite, who always preferred more witchy/ecstatic methods to ceremonial, and would say she dislikes most ceremonial practices and ceremonialists with me being an exception. Now even without this bias, even if it was my spirits and not hers, I wouldn’t just listen to what was said and follow, spirits aren’t all-knowing and all-wise. Yet I can’t help but wonder if that message was from her, or her spirits, or if her position confused the message coming through. While I love my ceremonial practices, at the time of the misa I had been performing Resh daily and I felt it had reached saturation, that it was no longer giving me the benefit it was when I started doing it again a few months earlier.
Could it be someone was telling my Resh wasn’t useful, but her position on ceremonial magick got in the way? Could it be that consciously or unconsciously the format of the misa gave her “permission” to state her opinion as fact and advice? Could it be that some spirit really thinks that ceremonial magick has no purpose for me. I don’t know, and I’m not expecting an answer, more than anything I’m relaying the event and pondering through it. Beyond the source and filter of the message, it also makes me wonder about people who just listen to such advice. Your Grandfather didn’t always know what was best for you while he was alive, why would he know better now that he’s dead? It’s not the people recieving the messages aren’t intelligent, but I feel they’re uncritical and I just don’t understand that position. Perhaps they really get what they need, the advice works, and each time they may come back a little better, but I just can’t understand that level of trust in the spirits and the intermediary. With every source of information, especially an occult source, question the information, question the source, question the bias, question who benefits. The advice may be right, wrong, or indifferent, but it’s up to us to figure out which is which, and to work with what we’re given.
During secular New Years I was incapacitated due to a minor case of the plague, so I never got around to my New Years House Cleaning. While I may do a major House Cleaning throughout the year, whenever I feel that stuffs needs to be cleared out, I always do one at New Years, so I know it’s done. I didn’t, and it took me a while to recover, and by the time I did it had slipped my mind. When I started having uncharacteristically bad dreams near the end of January a friend asked about my Wards, and I realized that I had missed this year. I decided to wait until Losar (Tibetan New Years, today) to perform the rituals, it’s customary in Losar to house clean, do some banishing rituals, and celebrate. While I have issues about adopting Tibetan customs (over Vajrayana ones) I figured it would be an appropriate time to work.
Now I’ve spoken about the type of house clearing rituals I perform before and this one follows much the same pattern. Though the details change it is always the same four steps: Warning/Dismissal, Shakeup the Energy, Igne Interficiatur, and Blessings.
Now before I began I cleaned the house; not the complete house for various reasons, but the dining room, the kitchen, and my room were properly cleaned, and everything else tidied up. I reupholstered the chairs in my dining room, and cleaned off the table for the first time in ages. I was amazed at how much it improved the energetic flow of the room. All of this is more relevant for another post, but in general, clean up, and improve before you majorly clear a place. Warning/Dismissal: I don’t banish right away. Spirits wander by, spirits get trapped, not everything unwanted is malicious, so to start off they get a warning, a push, and a way out. I start in the farthest darkest corner of my basement. I’ve meditated and assumed a Wrathful aspect, a terrifying astral form, right now it’s more about strength and intimidation. In Vajrayana (and Mahayana) figures have a Wrathful and a Peaceful aspect. I call to everything in the house that it is time to go, I’m giving them plenty of warning, but it’s time to leave my house. If they’re friend/family/Family/ally they can retreat to my altars, but if not it is time for them to GTFO. I then dropped several drops of Quadrivium’s Banishing Oil in my furnace’s humidifier. I find airducts and furnaces are somewhat like veins and hearts, so by placing some of the Banishing Oil (which smells wonderful to me) into the furnace as the water is spread through the house it is “breathing” out the oil and the effect. Then from that dark far corner I start burning my incense of sulphur, tobacco, and dragon’s blood. In my Wrathful aspect with a strong Voice I continue to proclaim a warning and to announce the upcoming eviction of the spirits. I walk from room to room, all the doors in the house are open, all the lights are on, and I spread this smoke and command through the house. I end up at the front door where I leave the rest of the incense to burn, and I return to the far dark corner. Shakeup the Energy: I refocus myself and take on a Peaceful aspect, one that is more placid and friendly, but still filled with strength, if a different type. Using my singing bowl, in what I’m sure is a very untraditional manner, I begin making it sing. There is something about the hum of the bowl that I can connect to, it’s like the hum is an extension of my energy and responds to me in much the same way. I fill the room with the sonic energy and then I rattle it, I shake it, I make the bowl chatter, and the energy in the room flakes a bit, it comes loose. What is trapped in the dark stagnant areas is shaken free and pulled away from the hidden places. What is really loose I cast forward, using the sound as a force to move it ahead of me, until it’s been cast out the front door, and if anything can’t be pushed out it will be dealt with in the next step. Again, it’s room to room, every place, all the closets, no place is spared. Igne Interficiatur: I have the bottle of Banishing Oil in my pocket, and I’m wearing my domta, a Tibetan ritual hat which among other things increases my energetic perception. Back in that dark far corner I resume the Wrathful aspect, and begin. Rainbow fire streams from the hands in this form, burning whatever it touches, or clawing forward the few most stubborn parts that can’t be burnt so easily. In every room, more than once in large rooms, or rooms with a noticeable division point, once the area has been burnt I cry out “Phat,” a complex and powerful syllable in Tibetan, with it appears a flash of fire which gets most of what remains, and I leave a glowing crystal Phat in the place where I cried it. I continue from room to room, leaving a collection of crystal Phats dangling in the air, reflecting rainbow light from clear light. When I’ve completed the entire house I sit down in the Heart of the Home, it is literally the centre of my house on the ground level, right beside a Grandfather clock (so it even has a heart beat) and with a slow and shallow Phat I connect myself to each of these centres. I call forth a Clear Wisdom Fire, a purifying energy, and I radiate it out from each of these points, scouring every room at once of whatever has left, stubborn or hidden. I put some Banishing oil on my finger, and go to the back door, I draw in oil and flame sigils of protection on the door frame, and do the same at the front door casting the charcoal and incense out into the snow. Blessing: Taking the Peaceful aspect again I have a mix of incense that includes copal, red sanders, Green Tara incense, Abramelin incense, and mastic (and others, but that’s the bulk of it). From that dark far corner I start my rounds again, this time filling the air with pleasant evocative incense smoke (enough to suffocate a small child). In the Peaceful form I radiate out Clear Light and blue-crystal light, while I’m also calling to my spirits, coaxing them back out of the altars to walk my house freely, to take the smoke and energy and transform them into beneficial forms.
My Losar altar, cause I’m proud of it, and you read a lot to get here, so have a picture.
Because it is also Losar, once I completed this, I put the incense on my Losar altar, lit all the candles, filled the offering bowls, lit the incense, and began my rituals and my feast.
The house feels calm, still, quiet and beautiful. Like that still silence in a power out, when you realize that you’re surrounded by a dozen background noises (fridge, lights, fans, computers) and suddenly they’re gone. That’s what it feels like now. Still, silent, and beautiful. Clean and fresh for the New Year.
I haven’t spoken to a friend in eleven months, nothing happened, it’s just we’ve been busy. Suddenly I get a facebook message “I’m holding a misa. Want to come talk to dead people with me?” Now if you don’t know what a misa is (which I didn’t before I was invited) to simplify it, it is a séance of sorts in the spiritualism/espiritismo tradition, and used and performed by people in the Santeria community. Said friend is a priestess in Lukumi and was running the event, so getting to talk to dead people and getting to try something new, of course I was game.
Being part of the spiritualism tradition it was fairly Catholic, so I ended up saying my first Hail Mary ever…about 30 times over the evening. When trying to decide where to sit my friend says “I know, sit at the other end of the table, you can be the anchor.” “The anchor?” “Yes, if the spirits are going to come through or possess anyone it will be the anchor.” We smirked and I took the position, unfortunately no possessions occured. After a long period of prayers to angels, guides, relatives, and whatever else we sat there silently waiting for messages to come through.
Slowly I got the sensation of communication, weaker than when I talk with things in most ways, but more visual than I get unless I’m skrying. Then the fun and annoyance happened. It was largely going to be my friend and my self talking to the spirits, they might communicate with others, but we were more of the focus point. My friend started talking, and internally I started cringing because she sounded like a TV medium “I’m getting the sense of an Aunt, or a Great-Aunt, some relationship like that. She says…” I didn’t know if my friend was cold-reading (which isn’t her style), making it up (which is possible for anyone on accident), or actually communicating with something.
Unfortunately my communications came through similar in the beginning, names that shifted in my head, messages vague enough to apply to six different things, so I was very reluctant to talk about what I saw/heard because it all sounded like a vague medium scam. But after the first two or three, I was in the space, as was my friend and stuff started coming through clear. It was an interesting experience; I talked with, delivered messages from, and accurately described people’s family members, or known spiritual companions. Part of it still had that TV medium feel as we pass what information we can back and forth trying to figure out who the spirit is. That’s something I’d love to figure out how to navigate better.
It was weird for me. I work with the dead, and I talk with the dead, but I’ve rarely talk to the dead for someone else, and it was awkward at times. Both feeling what the spirit is trying to relay emotionally, and in one case describing the one spirit who I could only describe as “a stereotypically sassy black older lady” which felt so odd to see and describe, but she gave me her name, and the person knew exactly who she was. She also said this person really was that stereotypical. Usually my confirmation of talking with the dead involves research and such afterwards, but it was nice to be able to talk with someone, describe the spirit, say the name, and have them know exactly who it was. Also everyone else at the misa is involved with Santeria, except for me, so their spirits are often from that tradition. What surprised me was a few times I would relay something a spirit had said to me, which made no sense to me, linguistically or spiritually in different cases, but apparently made perfect sense in the Santeria system. Instructions that felt silly or bizarre to me, turned out to be real practices.
Not surprising to me in the slightest, but none of “my spirits” came through, which surprised my friend. All in all it was an interesting evening, and I liked the chance to try my hand at working with the dead in another system. It might not be a method I’d use on my own but I’m glad to have a chance to try it, and another opportunity to flex those psychic muscles. If you’ve never been to a misa and are invited, I’d suggest checking them out. I doubt they’d change your world, but they are an interesting experience if stuff is actually happening.
